Online Marketing Tips – SEO Is Not Dead

It’s the nature of online marketing that it is constantly changing. Perhaps the greatest reason for this is the billion or so human beings who are competing for attention online; whether other product and service providers or some kid seeking attention, they all influence how that attention is gotten. Because of this, SEO is also constantly changing but is not dead.The BasicsSEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is about the various tactics that can be used to try to influence the search engines in your favor – to gain their attention for your website, in other words.It is not magic, and it is not technically difficult. However, it can be a bit time consuming and requires diligence and patience. After all, when you try to get a mega influencer like Google to pay attention to your designer website, you must give them reasons to do so. Really cool videos or images, or a truly informative blog post is not enough. It takes a combination of all three, along with some behind-the-scenes hints to the granddaddy of search to get you there.High-value SEO HintsOf all the hints that will catch the eye of the search engines, those that you place within the images you publish are some of the most important. Within the code of every published image is a little something called “alt txt”. Within a blog post or on a page, the code for the image here might look something like this:<a href="http://www.joeswebsite.com/location/" rel="attachment wp-att-2603"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2603" src="http://www.joeswebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/7K0A0972-300x230.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="230" /></a>The critical area here is the bit that’s highlighted, alt="". This is the area within the code where you tell Google and the other SEs what the image is about. Simply type a very short description between the quotation marks and that becomes your “alternative text” for the image. Normally, this would be one of your targeted keywords.Do NOT use the word “kitchen” as your alt text. Rather, something more descriptive is required to catch the attention of the search engines. Using something like “contemporary kitchen design” would have far more value that the generic, singe word description, “kitchen”. (Image from DwellingDecor.com)Your code now looks like this:<a href="http://www.joeswebsite.com/location/" rel="attachment wp-att-2603"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2603" src="http://www.joeswebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/7K0A0972-300x230.jpg" alt="contemporary kitchen design" width="300" height="230" /></a>You Coder, You!OMG… You just wrote some html code!Of course, your website will automatically create the image code for you when you upload it to your website and place it in a page or post (if you have a great CMS like WordPress, that is). All you have to do is insert your keyword into the appropriate spot and you're good to go.Remember, the search engines, even Google, do not have eyeballs to look at the images you publish. Using the alt text within the code for each image tells them what they’re “seeing”, enabling them to get a sense of its value for the searchers who use them.If you're an interior designer who posts a lot of images of your work to your website – and you should be doing just that – you simply must learn how to do this, or you are wasting all of those beautiful pictures of the work you do.Looking for more new design trends, tips, and ideas? Get in touch with TD Fall today.